Business of the House

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and John Pugh

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I take that issue very seriously. As I said last week, I think that the House made the right strategic decision in the last Parliament when it decided to contract out responsibility for the fixing and paying of our allowances. We know of the difficulties that we got into during the last Parliament in that regard. Having said that, however, I should add that the whole purpose of the allowances regime is to enable Members of Parliament to do their job: to represent their constituents, and to hold the Government to account. I am seriously concerned by the growing number of stories from Members on both sides of the House about the difficulties that they are experiencing in accessing the system.

Immediately after business questions I shall meet representatives of all the political parties, and shortly thereafter I shall have a second meeting with the chief executive and the chairman of IPSA, to whom I shall convey the strong feelings which I know are widely shared. I shall also do all that I can to ensure that the technical problems to which the hon. Gentleman has referred are addressed as quickly as possible.

[Dr John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

I am being besieged by requests to join all-party parliamentary groups. Surely there are now too many of them to be viable. Can the Leader of the House do anything to encourage a merger or coalition between APPGs?

[Sir George Young]

The solution rests in the hands of hon. Members. An all-party parliamentary group can only get going if enough Members agree to sponsor it; otherwise, it will not get off the ground. However, I agree that there are a large number of APPGs, many of which overlap.

Let me, at the beginning of a new Parliament, urge all colleagues to consider before automatically—to do a favour to a friend—signing up to an APPG whose meetings they have no intention of attending. Although APPGs have an important role to play, we need to be more selective about which ones we have, and to decide our priorities in a better way.